Local Americanists: David Wyatt on "Ralph Ellison's Labor of Love"
Local Americanists: David Wyatt on "Ralph Ellison's Labor of Love"
Please join us for a Local Americanists Works-in-Progress event featuring Professor Emeritus David Wyatt, who will share and discuss a chapter from his forthcoming book from LSU Press.
If you are interested in attending, please contact Bob Levine or Edlie Wong.
Abstract:
Soon after he finished writing Invisible Man, in 1951, Ralph Ellison wrote to a friend about "trying to get started on my next novel." He worked on the novel for some forty years but never considered it finished. After Ellison's death, two versions of the novel were put together by editors: Juneteenth appeared in 1999, and Three Days Before the Shooting . . . . in 2010. In "Ralph Ellison's Labor of Love," a chapter from my forthcoming book from LSU Press, I tell the story of Ellison's struggle to publish a second novel and of its strange afterlife.